


Baby Cub

by LaBelleetlaloup



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Always Female Stiles Stilinski, F/M, Gen, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 13:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5092952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaBelleetlaloup/pseuds/LaBelleetlaloup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Between one thing and another, Stiles ends up living in the rebuilt Hale House while Derek's off finding himself. When Hunters arrive on the heels of a supposedly feral omega, Stiles finds a baby werewolf abandoned on the front porch... a baby werewolf with the rare ability to shift into a full wolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby Cub

After the deadpool, Derek had set up the contractors to finish rebuilding the house before he left town. However, Derek had not deigned to stick around to supervise the project. Oh no. Why would he care about making sure that the multi-million dollar, three story home he was having built came out the way he wanted it? Stiles was pretty sure that Derek wasn’t secretly moving Peter from Eichen House to somewhere that was a little less 1950s porny horror film so there was no reason for him to be quite so intent on getting the heck out of dodge. She was maybe a little jealous of him being able to leave and get a break from the stress of living in Beacon Hills. She would get over it.

With Scott and Kira spending most of their time together being nauseatingly sappy and Lydia chasing Parrish around like a pathetic puppy in high heels and red lipstick, Stiles ended up splitting her time between corralling Liam and watching the Hale House reassemble. Despite her father’s best efforts, the only thing between Stiles and Malia, especially after Malia believed Lydia that she was Peter’s daughter, was that Stiles was frankly excellent at head. Therefore, Malia had dumped Stiles again before her birthday. Stiles wasn’t particularly surprised by the turn of events. But that had left her with even more free time because Malia refused to spend any time with Stiles that wasn’t very public and absolutely unavoidable. Stiles thought that Malia was a little overdramatic about the whole situation but she had acclimated to dealing with embarrassing situations from a very young age. At least with Malia being the one freaking out, Stiles was less embarrassed than if she was the one falling on her face in public.

For Stiles’ birthday, she went clubbing with Caitlin at some bi club called Sinema downtown. She was 18 now and she wanted to make out with someone, maybe mess around a little in a dark corner. If going home with a stranger wasn’t so dangerous, Stiles might have been into that too but as it was she thought that her luck she would get picked up by a vampire and be murdered despite Derek having never met one or heard of vampires actually existing. Overall, it was a lovely evening. The music was great and they danced a lot. Two guys and several girls had bought Stiles drinks. Caitlin had hooked up with some guy that Stiles thought had been at Heather’s party. Stiles had made out with one of the guys who had bought her a drink. If he happened to have bright blue eyes and pretty stubble, well, Caitlin wouldn’t judge her. Being the Sheriff’s kid, Stiles was too wary to let Caitlin leave with the guy with whom she had done who knows what in the hour Stiles couldn’t find them but she did facilitate the number exchange. Stiles hadn’t even given the guy she’d made out with her name, well aware that he was a stand-in because she was somehow in more need of a rebound from a guy she hadn’t ever dated than her girlfriend who’d dumped her for the second time in a month only two weeks prior. The first step was admitting that you had a problem, right? After Stiles and Caitlin got back to Caitlin’s house, because Caitlin’s parents were less likely to overreact at the smell of alcohol, they both crashed out on the bed to sleep off the drinks and dancing.

The next morning Stiles discovered that Lydia had planned a surprise party for her and was pissed off that Stiles had missed it. Stiles was perfectly content to listen to Lydia rant for a half hour in exchange for having discovered an awesome club, made a close friend out of Caitlin, and getting to eat cake and open her presents unmolested. Being able to give weird presents the stink eye without getting yelled at was lovely. Additionally, being able to be pleased with the grimoire that was probably bound in human skin was also lovely. Noshiko was such a lovely, thoughtful woman. The grimoire was probably from some witch coven, given the suspect leather binding, but good lord was the thing thorough. Stiles took the precaution of hiding it better than she hid her sex toys to make sure her father didn’t get rid of it.

Soon after Stiles’ April birthday, her junior year wrapped up and the last summer before graduation spread out before her. Construction on the Hale House was finished by the first of June. Stiles texted Derek to inform him that the contractors had finished without any mishaps. He sent back a curt message telling her to use one of his credit cards to have his personal belongings moved from the loft and put basic furnishings in the new house. Stiles thought that seemed very presumptuous but with Liam more or less in control of his shift and preferring to spend his free time with Mason, she needed something to keep herself occupied. Stiles found the longest dining room table she could that still looked good and sixteen dining chairs. They all fit around the table too. She just got a sectional for the living room and appliances for the kitchen. Stiles put bedroom sets in each of the bedrooms with the same mattress and plain pastel sheets in the drawer. There were something like a dozen bedrooms and she was not worrying about trying to plan a cohesive design for twelve different rooms. Stiles spent her brain power on beginning the rigamarole of filling out the FAFSA and deciding which colleges to apply to and filling out the college applications. She had actually even gotten a pretty decent start on the task before school started back.

Of course, Stiles ought to have been expecting that the quiet wouldn’t last. Theo Raeken, whose funeral she had attended mere months after her mother’s, swanned back in to town with his parents also miraculously alive on the first day of senior year. Stiles had not been allowed to attend the funeral after his parents didn’t survive losing their only child. Apparently whoever put on the funeral had planned it open casket and her father thought it would be inappropriate since they had committed suicide rather messily. Of course, Lydia and Scott neither one remembered that he was supposed to be dead. It was perhaps also not surprising that Theo was also claiming to be a werewolf, given that he clearly seemed to be trying to get in with Scott. The real Theo Raeken and both of his parents and their extended families had all been some sort of Fae and therefore, if it was the real Theo Raeken, he couldn’t be a werewolf. But as usual, no one believed Stiles.

Everything very quickly went to shit.

There was some sort of test tube shifters that were called Chimeras.

There were Dread Doctors that Stiles thought might be several hundred years old wreaking havoc. At least, they sounded like the men that had eventually taken down La Bete de Gevaudan in the version Stiles had read in the Argent Bestiary.

Kira lost control of herself and possibly developed some supernatural form of split personality disorder. At any rate, Kira-the-human and Kira-the-kitsune were acting independently of one another and seemingly not for the same aims. Noshiko whisked Kira off to some more remote area to help her get herself back together. Stiles almost wished she could go with them but she couldn’t leave her father alone in Beacon Hills.

Donovan got some sort of supercharge and broke into the house and put her father in the hospital before Stiles managed to push him down the stairs. Somehow the asshole managed to land on his head and snap his neck. No one seemed to care that he had been actively trying to kill both her and her father and that it seemed to prove that chimeras didn’t have proper werewolf healing: Stiles was a murderer.

Lydia got hurt by one of the other chimeras and when she went into a coma, her mother had her moved to Eichen House despite Stiles’ very valid and very emphatic protests.

Liam’s new girlfriend died in the hospital from being some sort of chimera and Liam nearly killed Scott but then the girl was fine the next morning. Because of this, when Theo and Scott accused Stiles of murder and Caitlin promptly blocked her number, Liam did not believe them and continued to wave at Stiles in the hallways. He was the only one. No one else would make eye contact.

Somehow all of this happened in the course of a few short weeks.

Once the Sheriff was out of the hospital, he made it quite clear that he did not remember the night very clearly and believed Theo’s statement that Stiles had beaten Donovan’s head in with a wrench despite the facts being that Theo had not been present that night and there was no bloodied wrench and Donovan had clearly died of a snapped neck rather than blunt force trauma. Stiles managed to live with it for nearly three weeks before she snapped and packed up everything she owned, everything her mother had left her, and moved into the Hale House, getting the utilities and internet and phone line all hooked up as quickly as possible on Derek’s credit card.

Derek didn’t really question the fact she had set up utilities in his name and moved in to his house; he just sent her information to take the money out of one of his bank accounts instead. Stiles thought that was very trusting of him but was too grateful for the implied approval to question him. She needed someone who wasn’t sixteen that didn’t hate her in her life. At this point, Liam’s approval felt almost like Peter’s approval-a nice feeling until you thought about it for more than five seconds in a row and realized that what he thought was acceptable was probably very unacceptable in general society.

Stiles slowly acclimated to living alone in the middle of the woods as September became October. She kept the house ringed in mountain ash and salt at all times. She purchased a state of the art security system from a place that she may or may not have used less than legal methods to ascertain that they were not Hunters. There were motion-detector lights on every side of the house that illuminated the entire clearing when triggered. Stiles also began adding more homey touches to the house. She bought rugs and lamps and art for the walls and a small kitchen table that only sat six people so it felt less empty.

She forced herself to keep focused on her studies and finish her college applications. So long as she kept her grades up despite everything, Stiles could probably get some good merit scholarships and do work-study and student loans for anything else. With no one looking over her shoulder, it was sometimes difficult not to roll over and go back to sleep in the morning but Stiles managed to keep on her routine and keep semi-decent food in the fridge to eat three squares. She got up, ate something easy like frozen waffles or poptarts, went to school, came back to the Hale House, had a snack while she did homework, took a walk to get some exercise and fresh air in her day, had supper and wound down for the night with Netflix or a book or a bubble bath and some personal time. On the weekends, Stiles usually tried to spend some time outside, make food that she could freeze in portions for the week, and get some essays and things written for spare cash. People might not make eye contact, but they were still perfectly happy to give her some of their gas money to get out of starting from scratch with their college admissions essays. For the most part, it made up what she spent at the grocery store.

One Friday night in mid-October, Stiles woke up to the sound of a shrill cry. She sat straight up in bed as the cry came again. It sounded like it was in front of the house. Some instinct told her that it was not a threat and Stiles rushed downstairs, turning on lights as she went. She yanked the door open and looked down to find a tiny wolf cub in a baby onesie and tangled in a soft blanket. The lights were on all around the house, illuminating the clearing but Stiles saw no sign of a parental figure.

“Where’s your mom?” she mumbled to herself as she scooped up the baby, wrapping it securely in her arms. It had to be a werewolf baby, left for the Hales to protect. Stiles saw a movement in the trees. “Hello?” she called out. There was silence for a moment and then an arrow landed in the doorframe by her head. Stiles startled, clutching the baby a little more tightly. Hunters. She squared her shoulders and raised her chin and refused to be cowed. Stiles made her voice ring out across the clearing. “Please, regale me with your explanation for my father, the Sheriff, as to why you murdered me with a bow and arrow in the middle of the night. I’d love to hear all about how you think you’re getting out of going to prison.”

A woman with a crossbow stepped out into the clearing with several men at her back. “You must be the human.”

“As far as I’m concerned, we’re all human,” Stiles retorted.

The Huntress rolled her eyes. “Well, we’ll leave you alone, little Red, but we’ve been chasing this omega all over the Southwest. If your mutts get in our way…” she trailed off sinisterly.

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll break the code and kill them because Gerard was a wonderful role model,” Stiles answered with heavy sarcasm. “So how’d this poor woman end up Omega? Are you certain she’s feral?”

“It was just her and her mate and now he’s dead.”

“And you had absolutely nothing to do with that?” Stiles scoffed. “How’d she catch Hunter attention?”

“Her mate caught our attention but he was dead before we got there. She ran out in front of our truck and nearly caused a pile up. Not to mention that she was seen by humans shifted.”

“So, she freaked out because her mate was murdered and ran across a road. You don’t know that she’s feral.”

“Do not question me, child!”

“You do realize that the Preserve is firstly private property so you’re trespassing and secondly a national wildlife preserve so hunting here is a felony, don’t you? I rather doubt you’d be able to get rid of your weapons and get out of here before the cops get here.”

“Alright, we’re leaving,” the Huntress conceded with ill grace. She and her men disappeared into the trees. Stiles desperately hoped that they really were leaving and the omega had found somewhere safe to sleep. It was cold. Stiles retreated back into the house and closed the door, still cradling the little baby werewolf. As the door closed, it shifted back to human form.

“Okay, baby, let’s go get some sleep.” Stiles smiled at the sleeping baby. “I bet your mommy will be beating the door down first thing in the morning and you don’t want to be grumpy when she gets here.” Stiles trusted that a baby who could shift into a wolf cub wasn’t going to die from sleeping in something that wasn’t a crib and put the baby on one of the pillows she didn’t use before falling back into bed herself.

Shockingly, Stiles did not wake up to a pounding on the door or the alarm going off because the baby’s mom had already gotten impatient and broken in. She woke up to the soft sunlight on her face. Stiles turned and saw the baby was also just waking up.

“Thank you for not screaming all night,” Stiles murmured. “Alright, let’s get you cleaned up because I bet you’re at least wet. Let’s see if Liam will bring us diapers, mm?” Stiles picked the baby up and headed for the bathroom with her cell. Stiles laid the baby on its back on the counter and got it out of its onesie. Apparently the baby was a girl and her mom used the fancy cloth diapers. “You know, I thought people only bought them to use as dust rags.” Stiles luckily had baby wipes under the sink and cleaned the baby up but she was not liking the idea of cleaning the diaper. Stiles called Liam.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Um, there’s an omega in town with Hunters following her. Normally this message would conclude with please be careful but she dropped her baby on my porch for safekeeping so if you could swing by the store and pick up a pack of cloth diapers, that would be great. And don’t worry, everyone will assume they’re for dust cloths.”

“Good lord.” Liam groaned. “Yeah, alright, I’ll pick up some and bring them over. Is this baby at least cute?”

“Tell Liam you’re super cute,” Stiles cooed. The baby made a gargling noise. Liam chuckled.

“Want me to bring my mom?”

“Bring your mom where?” Mason said in the background.

“There’s an omega in town who dropped her baby at the Hale pack den,” Liam explained. “Thought Stiles might appreciate some help.”

“Oh, my sister miscarried at like seven months last year. We’ve got a ton of baby stuff in my attic. She was super depressed about the whole situation so my parents took everything out of her house for her while she was at work one day. I could get some baby clothes and formula and all that. Does formula go bad?”

“Tell Mason I’m pretty sure formula does go bad. But the diapers won’t have. Bring the diapers and baby stuff from Mason’s house. Get formula from the store. I think I can manage without your mom coming though.”

“Alright,” Liam agreed. “Mason, you’re coming with me.”

“Okay. See you soon baby!” Mason cooed at the phone. Stiles giggled as the call ended.

Stiles talked absently at the baby while she located a small tub and some sensitive skin soap. She gave the baby a bath and washed her onesie, assuming that her own shower could wait until Mason and Liam arrived. Surely they would be fine with the baby for the twenty minutes she would be in the shower.

Thankfully, after a thorough bath, Stiles and baby only had to wait about a quarter hour before Liam and Mason showed up with supplies. The baby immediately shifted into wolf cub form the moment they stepped onto the porch.

“So, as you can tell, she doesn’t like new people,” Stiles explained as she let them in. Mason gawked at her for a moment.

“The baby has a full shift? Intense!”

“I thought that it was a really rare thing,” Liam gawked.

“It’s typically a sign of lineage, actually,” Stiles corrected, waving them in. “Noshiko gave me a super awesome grimoire for my birthday and apparently some of the werewolf packs are older than others and still have the full shift. I thought that the only pack in North America with lineage that far back was the Hale pack, but I could be wrong.”

“I thought that born wolves didn’t start shifting until puberty.” Liam looked confused.

“Yes, unless they suffer some form of extreme duress, like say Daddy being murdered and Mommy fleeing the Hunters—who put the arrow in the doorframe—for weeks on end and then abandoning you on a porch?” Stiles raised an eyebrow at Liam. Both the boys followed her into the kitchen.

“That sounds awful! Did the Hunters get her mom yet?” Mason asked. Stiles shook her head as she handed him the baby, who made a soft distressed sound but once securely settled in Mason’s arms, quieted down.

“I don’t think so. I informed them that I was human and that they were trespassing and I wasn’t afraid to call the cops and leave them floundering for an explanation that doesn’t involve them taking a ride to Eichen House.” Stiles got to work heating up the formula on the stove and washing out a bottle. Liam hovered at Mason’s shoulder, petting the baby on her little furry head.

“I would have thought her mom would have circled back by now,” Liam commented. Stiles nodded.

“I thought she would have too but the den is supposed to reflect the state of the pack…”

“She thought she left the baby with a strong pack,” Liam murmured. “So maybe she’s still running and left her baby where she’d be safe. That would be so horrible.”

“Yeah. Once we get her shifted back and fed and dressed, I thought maybe we could go see if either baby can sniff out her mother or she left a trail.”

“Sure. I can probably try to track the mom through baby’s scent,” Liam offered.

Once the formula was warmed to an appropriate temperature and in a bottle, the baby shifted back. Both Mason and Liam cooed over how adorable she was. Mason helped her hold the bottle while Stiles got the baby into a diaper and clean onesie and Liam answered Hayden’s call. Hayden showed up with Tracy before they finished feeding and burping the baby. Stiles was just glad that neither Hayden nor Tracy flinched from her.

They all set off into the woods, Liam and Hayden and Tracy all trying to scent-track the mother from the baby. As Stiles ought to have anticipated, it didn’t work terribly well. But Stiles found an old trail that had been overgrown freshly trod. It led back out to a road and upon further inspection had clearly been broken back in from the road towards the house. Mason seemed to be the only other one who thought it seemed a little odd.

“This used to be a path, right?”

“Yeah, back before the Fire,” she affirmed.

“Sure lucky that poor omega found it,” Hayden said. “Much easier to follow an existing path than to make a new one.” Tracy and Liam nodded. Mason looked suspicious.

“How many packs did you say had the lineage for the full shift?” he asked.

“It’s six or seven in the world,” Stiles answered. “They don’t typically marry out. Other wolves marry in.”

“Huh,” Mason looked even more suspicious. “Very lucky…”

Stiles was beginning to have the same thought: maybe this omega had turned up in Beacon Hills because her maiden name was Hale.

After another hour of fruitless searching, they ended up back at the Hale House. Hayden reminded Liam and Mason about an essay they had due Monday in one of their classes and they all bailed. Tracy stayed, fidgeting nervously.

“What’s wrong?” Stiles asked, changing the baby’s diaper.

“When your mom died… how did you handle it?”

“Not well,” Stiles scoffed. “I know it sounds stupid but you really do just need time. One day you’ll remember what you had for lunch again and you won’t have to be actively distracted to be entertained by something.”

“But… I… It was kind of my fault…” Tracy mumbled, staring at the table. “How am I ever going to get past that?”

“You won’t get past the guilt, not without a fuckton of therapy,” Stiles replied, averting her own eyes. “But you will eventually get past the depression stage of grief.”

“Your mom’s death was an accident, though, right?”

“That’s what Scott’s dad put in the report,” Stiles nodded. “To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I remember. But I do know that I was there and then my mom was shot and she was already in the fucking hospital but they still couldn’t keep her from dry-drowning because her lungs collapsed. I still feel just as guilty about it as I did the day she died. And Derek felt responsible for the Fire just because he wasn’t home. It took him seven years to get over survivor’s guilt.” That wasn’t entirely true but Tracy certainly didn’t need to know Derek’s personal business. Tracy couldn’t hear lies anyway.

“So there’s no hope?” she chuckled self-deprecatingly.

“Do I look like I’m still non-functional with guilt?” Stiles asked. Tracy shook her head. “No. Because it will become your new normal. You’ll learn to shoulder it and keep going. Besides, there’re better things to focus on than guilt. The grief will be all-encompassing for a while. That’s just life. But there’s still kitties and puppies and silly videos on the internet to distract yourself and there’s important stuff like school and work and other people who are still here. You’ll figure it out. If nothing else, I have faith in you.”

“Thanks,” Tracy mustered a small genuine smile. “So… what are you gonna do about the baby on Monday when you have to go to school?”

“I’m hoping we’ll have found her mom by then but I can probably find someone reputable to pass the buck to. Worst comes to worst, I’ll use one of my sick days.”

Tracy stayed for the rest of the day, absently watching TV while Stiles took care of the baby and tried to find a way to find a werewolf in hiding and texted Derek to ask if he had a cousin who had survived the Fire and stayed in the Southwest. After she thought she might go crazy if she had to read through one more page in the Grimoire, Stiles opened her laptop to scroll Facebook for a little bit. Oh! She could search for Hales on the Facebook. Only about five minutes of searching yielded a Grace Hale who supposedly lived in eastern New Mexico and was twenty-two, a plausible age range to have a baby. She hadn’t updated in over a month and her husband had an obituary dated two days after her last status update that credited his death to a freak hiking accident. Well, well, well… didn’t that look promising? Ah, and look, there was a series of baby and pregnancy pictures and some tongue-in-cheek werewolf references and triskelions. Now that Stiles knew who she was, hopefully it would be easier to find her. After all, the omega was a Hale and it might have been her territory eight years ago but Derek had taught Stiles the lay of the land himself. Alright… let’s see… what was a Hunter-proof lair that was near the house?

Tracy had left around suppertime and Stiles had folded and tried calling the number on Grace’s facebook to be informed the number was disconnected and then called Derek.

“What?”

“Your cousin Grace is back in town with Hunters on her heels and she dumped her baby on the doorstep. Where would she be hiding?”

“What.”

“Intonation, Derek, it’s relevant.”

“Shut up. Grace is back? Where’s that guy she was dating?”

“She and Arthur got married a few years ago. He died about the time she went on the run.”

“Ah.” Stiles sighed and waited Derek out. “Um… Grace was really good at hide and seek. She might have taken refuge in the caves. You could try the cabins. There was supposed to be some sort of secret entrance to an underground bunker there. I doubt she’d be at the train cars, but it’s a possibility.”

“Thanks!”

“Do you need me to come back?” Derek asked, clearly reluctantly.

“No, no, keep soul searching or whatever it is you’re doing. I can manage. Baby and I have been getting along very well and she already knows how to sleep through the night.”

“Well, that’s the hardest part,” Derek agreed. “Keep me updated.”

“I’m assuming that you have no problem with me offering her a bedroom?”

“Of course I don’t.”

“Alright then. I’m not going out again tonight. I’ll get some back-up tomorrow and try your hidey-holes and let you know what happens.”

“Thanks,” Derek replied and hung up.

“Goodbye to you too,” Stiles told the empty air.

Stiles waited until the next day and managed to get both Tracy and Hayden for back-up. Liam and Mason were working on their essays. Stiles conceded that homework was equally important and left them to it. The three girls headed out with the baby in Stiles’ Jeep, checking all of Derek’s hidey-holes.

Grace was not out in the caves, thank the lord. Stiles would never have been able to enjoy a walk by them again.

Grace was not at the train cars. At least the girl seemed to have higher standards than Derek did under pressure.

Grace was underneath the cabins. Luckily, the Hunters had not had the forethought to follow them and Grace was not feral. Handing over the baby and getting Grace into the Jeep was much easier than anticipated. Trying to explain the state of the pack was just as excruciating as expected. Grace was understandably horrified that Derek was just gone, Peter was in Eichen House, Cora had been out of town for about a year, Isaac had left when his girlfriend died, Jackson had changed continents, and the remaining werewolves and supernatural creatures were, for the most part, either not at all or barely on speaking terms with the only alpha in the territory.

“Are you all trying to end up omega?”

“Scott told Stiles that pushing a wendigo over the stair rail when he was trying to eat her legs was murder. Clearly he doesn’t care about her safety and he’s known her longer than any of the rest of us!” Hayden protested.

“How did that kill a wendigo?”

“He was a test tube wendigo and landed on his head. My best understanding was that gravity snapped his neck.”

“Oh…” Grace nodded though she clearly still had no clue what they were talking about. “What are you two?”

“I’m a recovering kanima,” Tracy explained.

“I’m a werewolf,” Hayden explained.

“You don’t smell…”

“Grace, if you want to sleep in the house tonight with me and baby, you’ll stop being rude.”

“What are you, twelve?” Grace snapped back.

“I’m 18 and I have the security code. How loud do you think the screeching would be for your ears?” Grace settled back into her seat. Stiles rolled her eyes. “Hayden, be a love and text Derek that we found his cousin, will you?”

“Is he the one who gave us a list of places to check?” Tracy asked.

Stiles nodded. “Yes, he is. With the baby managing a full shift, I searched Facebook for Hales and found Grace here fit the bill perfectly. I thought I should tell him that his relative was here.”

“Makes sense,” Tracy agreed.

“Message sent,” Hayden announced. “You know, Liam thought you two were dating.” Stiles chuckled.

“No. We weren’t dating.”

“My sympathies,” Tracy muttered wryly. Stiles grinned widely.

“Right?”

“Is he ever coming back?” Hayden asked.

“Honestly? I’ve got no clue. He basically took off like a bat out of hell.”

“Is it really that bad here?” Grace asked.

“Let’s just say that you’ve been the tamest problem we’ve dealt with since Peter woke up from his coma,” Stiles replied. “And a Hunter put an arrow in my doorframe right next to my head in the middle of the night.”

“There was a murder spree last Spring,” Tracy said.

“There was an attack on the hospital last November,” Hayden added.

“There were ritualized murders at the beginning of last school year,” Tracy continued.

“A bunch of guys died the spring before that,” Hayden pointed out.

“And before that there were a bunch of dead animals,” Tracy finished. 

Stiles slowly smiled. Why not clear up these matters for everyone? Make it perfectly clear to Grace what she had brought her little Hunter issue to. That sounded like a splendid idea.

“Peter woke up from his coma and killed a several animals and carved a revenge spiral in them. Laura came back to find out what was going on, only for Peter to attack her and for her to find out that the Argents had also arrived by one of them cutting her in half before she could heal. Peter bit Scott without any communication whatsoever. Derek showed up around that time, looking for Laura. He found a dead body instead of his sister. Then, after Peter goes on a rampage and kills everyone who helped Kate cover up the Fire, Derek has to kill Peter because none of the Argents know their own code. Apparently reparations no longer exist.

“So then Gerard shows up supposedly to bury his daughter because Peter tore her throat her. Derek tries to build up a pack but one of his bites turns into a kanima and kills Isaac’s dad and then gets a master and kills a bunch of guys who were on the swim team when his master almost drowned to death at a pool party they were hosting. Scott makes a deal with Gerard to screw everyone over, especially Derek. Deucalion shows up with an alpha pack and one of his alpha-betas bites Victoria but because they aren’t stupid enough to announce their presence, her daughter tries to kill Derek and all three of his healthy betas. Peter manages to save the kanima from himself, gets him back to being an ordinary werewolf with some True Love resurrection thing. Jackson takes off to London once he’s learned control. Victoria’s husband drags their daughter to France to get her head on straight because he realizes his father is a psycho after forty something years.

“Oh! And Gerard kidnapped and tortured two of Derek’s betas and when Chris let them go, Deucalion picked them right up and locked them in a bank vault that kept them from the moon for several months. When Cora showed up because she heard there was a Hale alpha, she got thrown in the vault too. One of the alphas failed to kill her lover who happened to be her emissary and the woman went nuts and killed about fifteen people to get a power-up from the Nemeton to get her revenge. Erica died in the vault. Three of the alphas in Deucalion’s pack impaled Boyd on Derek’s claws while electrocuting him. Boyd didn’t survive. Cora got the hell out of dodge.

“I got possessed and had a lovely two months having almost no control over my body while it tried to cause mass chaos and stabbed my friends. Then somehow I got a brand new body, a lovely case of body dysmorphic disorder, and the body I was born in kidnapped one of my friends and its minions killed one of my other friends. Good times, good times.

“Then there was some idiot in Eichen House who apparently doesn’t know the Bible because she overheard Peter quoting Isaiah or Jeremiah, about the favored remnant that survives the Lord’s cull, and decided that Peter was asking her to make a list of all the supernatural creatures in Beacon Hills and put bounties on their heads so they would all die because she claimed that Peter, despite being completely paralyzed at the time, told her that all supernatural creatures were monsters. Since a fuckton of professional assassins and Hunters showed up, a lot of people died. Apparently Scott doesn’t know the Bible either because he gave Peter to Chris Argent and now Peter’s in Eichen House.

“Additionally, Kate Argent somehow survived having her throat ripped out and is running around free somewhere or other as some sort of were-creature. No one has a single clue where in the world she is, and her brother, who was supposed to be hunting her down, has managed to find nothing in the months he’s been looking.

“Then some lovely new people that call themselves The Dread Doctors who know how to make humans into were-creatures with injections show up in town. See exhibits A and B. Some idiot werewolf showed up claiming to be Theo Raeken with two living parents…”

“But I went to both Theo and his parents’ funeral!” Grace interrupted.

“Yup. Theo and both his parents are very dead. So like I said… some idiot who managed to convince Scott… And most of the chimeras were given mercury poisoning by their makers, but the werecoyote managed to resurrect four of them.” Stiles waved at Tracy and Hayden. “These two and two boys. And some assassin thinks she’s Malia Tate’s mom and they’re both trying to kill each other.” Stiles cocked her head. “I think that’s most of it.” Grace made an incoherent noise. Stiles smirked.

“Good god, no wonder you’re all so weird,” Tracy exclaimed.

“Mmhm, and I left out some of the more minor traumatic events, like the hotel that tried to make everyone commit suicide and the whole ice bath issue and Peter possessing Lydia and knocking Derek out to use her magic and his blood to resurrect himself…”

“No wonder Derek didn’t want to stick around,” Grace agreed. “Even with a mate still here.”

“What do you know that I don’t know?” Stiles asked, legitimately confused.

“General werewolf behavior,” Grace quipped. “It’s just an assumption, admittedly, but I can’t see any other reason he’d let a human live in his house with no one else there.”

“Stiles needed it,” Hayden insisted. “Her dad all but kicked her out. What was he going to do? Tell her to live on the street?”

“Oh,” Grace replied. “I did say it was an assumption. I could be wrong.” They could all hear in her voice that she still thought she was correct. No one bothered to argue further.

Grace continued to be short and ill-tempered most of the time for a good while. Stiles was continuously reminding herself that the woman’s husband had just recently died to keep her from immediately turning her out. It had taken a lot of self-control to talk the Hunters into leaving town once they figured out that Stiles had taken Grace in rather than just turn the ungrateful jerk over to them. Stiles had been very proud of herself for that one.

*

*

*

Eventually, Grace got used to Stiles or Stiles got used to Grace and their pointed barbs softened into witty repartee. Stiles did not look the gift horse in the mouth. She and Grace had liberated both Peter and Lydia from Eichen House and they were both recovering nicely from their stay in supernatural prison. Peter and Lydia both moved into the Hale den, Peter to be close to his family and help with baby Faith because Grace wanted to get a job, Lydia because she no longer trusted her mother after being admitted to Eichen House. Despite the fact they didn’t have an alpha, a pack formed around Stiles and Grace in the Hale den: Liam, Mason, Hayden, Tracy, Peter, Lydia, Parrish, Grace, baby Faith and Stiles.

Derek showed back up in Beacon Hills a week before Christmas with Cora, Isaac and Jackson in tow and news that Chris had found Kate and was trying to reason with her. No one thought that was going to work but she was his sister. He probably would feel horribly guilty if he didn’t try to get her to come to her senses before either killing her or locking her in one of the supernatural prisons.

Jackson took over Derek’s old loft, having none of the bad associations that the rest of them had with it. He had barely known Boyd anyway and he had not been even in town when Boyd died in the loft. Cora and Isaac and Derek all moved into the den. Peter figured out a way to make Tracy a werewolf chimera like Hayden rather than a kanima and suddenly the werewolves greatly outnumbered the non-werewolves again. Tracy and Hayden were technically chimeras but they called themselves werewolves, and all five Hales were werewolves and so were Jackson and Liam and Isaac. That was ten werewolves to four non-werewolves—Mason, Stiles, Lydia, and Parrish. And somehow or other Jackson had acquired alpha powers, so they even had a proper alpha. He claimed that they had just happened one day and he hadn’t killed anyone. Derek didn’t believe him even though he admitted that Jackson’s heart was steady. Peter had seriously side-eyed him at the beginning. Stiles wondered if Jackson had become alpha when Derek nearly killed himself to save Cora’s life. It really wasn’t that important in the long run.

On Stiles’ 19th birthday, she and Tracy and Hayden all got to feel stupid and Grace got to feel smug. Apparently Derek had somehow gotten confused about driving laws and had assumed that Stiles was a year younger than she was. So she’d had to repeat sixth grade because of her depression and anxiety issues after her mother’s death… Derek thought she had been not only even younger than him than she was but also that she was still underage. He was interested in her. Stiles smacked him for being oblivious and then acting like an idiot and asking her out on what he had thought was her 18th birthday. Because she was actually 19 and she had spent her last birthday drunkenly making out with someone because he looked like Derek, Stiles still agreed to go out with him the following weekend.

Despite the fact that getting rid of the werecoyote and the Dread Doctors and some bloodthirsty murderers that showed up as well had been no easier than any of their other problems, with such a large pack, everyone took the emotional strain better than they had with their previous problems. After that, things seemed to calm down. With the territory clearly claimed and the Nemeton appeased and turned back to its neutral setting, there were no more sudden murder sprees. Tracy and Stiles and Lydia and Cora and Isaac all left Beacon Hills for college. Derek followed Stiles to college. Parrish did not follow Lydia. Jackson, being the alpha, did online courses because it was apparently not the done thing for him to relocate, even temporarily, without taking the whole pack with him. He could go somewhere for a week or two on vacation but not for any longer than that, certainly not for the months that comprised a semester. Jackson took it pretty well, all told.

Scott left for vet school and never came back. Melissa moved, presumably to settle down wherever Scott had decided to live.

At the end of the school year, Kira’s father terminated his employment contract with the school and left town to join back up with his wife and daughter. Kitsune school was apparently not a short process.

Malia eventually started talking to the Hale pack members that she knew and joined up with the pack. Stiles and Malia never really got along again but they both managed to avoid making a scene when they had to share space as they learned to be in a pack together. Isaac and Malia ended up as fast friends to everyone’s surprise.

Eventually, everyone moved into the Hale den and Faith was the oldest of her generation instead of being the baby. One day, they all looked around and realized that they were living out “happily ever after”. It was a good realization.


End file.
